Like most IDiots, Doug Axe continues to equate Darwinism and natural selection with evolution. He does this in spite of the fact that his colleague, Ann Gauger, claims to understand the difference. According to her, scientists who doubt Darwinism can still be firm supporters of evolution. If the IDiots actually believe this then why do they keep using the term "Darwinism" to describe their opponents?

The bit about junk DNA in the video reveals that Doug Axe doesn't known dick about evolution or Darwinism. The version of evolution known as Darwinism rejects the idea that most of our genome is junk. I don't think Doug Axe can handle that kind of truth.

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A general comment: It is one of the more common creationist points that recent advances in molecular biology were not available to Darwin when he was alive, and that somehow these findings would have surprised him and challenged his theories.

I've never been able to follow this line of "reasoning." It seems to me that, instead, Darwin's ideas demand that cells be complex things, filled with various molecular structures to allow the transfer of hereditary information and the translation of this information into biological structures and processes.

What would have been surprising was if cells were simple and yet were still able to perform the myriad functions required to support the diversity of life found on earth. If we had discovered that cells were nothing more than otherwise-empty bags of fluid, then that would have been strong evidence that there is some form of supernatural magic allowing life to persist.

missing the point , how did all that information get there for the cells to be that complex (there is always a "pre assuming" variable to the evolutionary model)...random blindness? math doesnt add up and information just does not Appear, would you trust your computer if it was by random unguided forces?

Please show the exact calculations that lead you to conclude that "the math doesn't add up." Did you read the post linked above to the article by Jeffrey Shallit? Are you able to answer the question he poses? You'll notice a few of your fellow creationists attempted to, and only succeeded in demonstrating their total ignorance.

lets use simple factoring : for ONE example: hemoglobin alone, combinations are 4x10 to the 619 (only 5 combinations are known to function) , the possibilities to get to the 5 are twice as many as the seconds the known universe has been around. there is no time,this (among many math equations for natural selection) fall under "universal Probability band" . so as with many atheist/evolutionist jeffery PRESUMES the variables in existence to run this algorithm . Chance never creates anything material my friend, never once has it been proven, never seen, never even attempted because it defys logic . 1+1=2 never created anything. Mathematics is a tool of the mind, not a material. C.S. Lewis better describes this basic logic better than i can. Im always amazed though at atheist thinking, because in that worldview ( materialism and natural laws are all their is) how do you trust what you think? Reason, logic, philosophy and mathematics are tools of the mind, they dont fall into your worldview. Arnt you just "dancing to your DNA" ? reacting to chemical process's in your brain? How can you trust anything you think to be true or false ? so there is no reason to bring theism or creationist into the discussion, atheism cant support itself right out of the gate.

ok,..not sure how this phrase supports either side of the argument though, so lets dismiss this as what it is, ad hominem . Also, this phrase is it from the Fiction writer side or the professor of biochemistry ? This just kind of attacking people and not the topic just supports the claim that " Not all statements from scientist are statements of science" makes you wonder the aggression though ......whats the elephant in the room here ?

The phrase mike, refers to you, obviously. You're an ignorant idiot with an overinflated ego. Oh, sure, you'll ignorantly call this an "ad hominem", because like many imbeciles like yourself, you mistake an assessment based on the insurmountable ignorance and stupidity of your "arguments" with an attack to the person instead of on the argument. But you fail to understand that when both are linked it's not ad hominem any more.

Yo properly calculate a probability you would have to know what you're talking about. Here you're assuming that haemoglobin had to exist. That only haemoglobin would have been able to work with oxygen, that oxygen had to become a metabolite, that metabolism had to be exactly what it is, you talk about "five combinations" just to give the appearance of knowing something, but you told us nothing but how deeply ignorant you are, you don't know the background abundances of the amino-acids in haemoglobin, you don't know how many different sequences would produce a haemoglobin that would work. You're assuming so fucking much, while ignoring so fucking much, that your argument cannot but be found to be amazingly imbecilic and ignorant. So don't act surprised at being thought infantile. Get down of your high horse, you're just some arrogant ignorant idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Please, save you answer. Go study and understand correctly the sciences you wish to attack, rather than the stupid, infantile cartoons you learn in creationist school. Maybe then you'll have something meaningful to say. In the meantime you'll only appear as the ignorant idiot that you decided to portray yourself to be.

Rumraket: ...of all the things Axe says it all boils down to his assertion that evolution can't produce "information on that scale"

And why is it impossible? Because "we know" that it's impossible. It's a nice argument. Young-Earth creationism must be true because "we know" Earth can't be older than just a few thousand years. Definitely not billions. Billions are impossible. Has anyone ever counted up to one billion?

Douglas Axe may go down in history as the man who introduced the notion of brilliant engineering (= brilliant intelligent design, BID) as opposed to ordinary intelligent design (OID). OID is perhaps evolvable, but BID can't be. "We know" it can't.

Also with respect to enzymes, IDcreationists will often insist to be shown that an enzyme that catalyzes a certain class of reactions, like (off the top of my head) a peptide ligase(joining amino-acids together) be evolved into catalyzing a completely different class of reactions like peroxidase catalysis(splitting R-O-O-R bonds in the presence of an electron donor), which involves a change into a signiticantly different kind of chemistry.

What they fail to realize is that evolution isn't actually postulated to have taken routes of such severe catalytic change(only extremely rarely at best), but instead progressed by simply changing what was originally weakly catalyzing, but very promiscous ancestral enzymes that catalyzed a very broad range of related reactions, into a much larger set of much more effective, specialized enzymes.

So if "computer scientists" could match "DNA’s capacity to store information" then you would accept a completely natural explanation for the development of life ?

Otherwise why make the comparison ?

And your statement about DNA is asserted without any sort of evidence. By a number of metrics such as access time and error rate intelligently designed digital storage is far superior to DNA for the purposes that we employ digital storage.

What are you babbling about? Crystals store structural information intrinsically, and crystalization is a natural process. Even better, crystals can replicate this information in individual atomic layers as they grow in size. http://originoflife.net/information/Turns out "mindless matter" has no problem storing and replicating information through natural physical forces, no magical designers required.

Furthermore, scientists have, in fact, achieved atomic-scale data storage with greater density than that of DNA, using scanning tunneling microscopy. Don't you follow the news? The day will eventually come when your average computer uses single-atom quantum state bit storage, which will be even better still. Will DNA stop appearing as a magical entity to you when that happens?

"Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram"

A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times.

The work, carried out by George Church and Sri Kosuri, basically treats DNA as just another digital storage device. Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1, A and C = 0).

To read the data stored in DNA, you simply sequence it — just as if you were sequencing the human genome — and convert each of the TGAC bases back into binary. To aid with sequencing, each strand of DNA has a 19-bit address block at the start (the red bits in the image below) — so a whole vat of DNA can be sequenced out of order, and then sorted into usable data using the addresses.

Scientists have been eyeing up DNA as a potential storage medium for a long time, for three very good reasons: It’s incredibly dense (you can store one bit per base, and a base is only a few atoms large); it’s volumetric (beaker) rather than planar (hard disk); and it’s incredibly stable — where other bleeding-edge storage mediums need to be kept in sub-zero vacuums, DNA can survive for hundreds of thousands of years in a box in your garage.

It is only with recent advances in microfluidics and labs-on-a-chip that synthesizing and sequencing DNA has become an everyday task, though. While it took years for the original Human Genome Project to analyze a single human genome (some 3 billion DNA base pairs), modern lab equipment with microfluidic chips can do it in hours. Now this isn’t to say that Church and Kosuri’s DNA storage is fast — but it’s fast enough for very-long-term archival.

Just think about it for a moment: One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives — the densest storage medium in use today — you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos. In Church and Kosuri’s case, they have successfully stored around 700 kilobytes of data in DNA — Church’s latest book, in fact — and proceeded to make 70 billion copies (which they claim, jokingly, makes it the best-selling book of all time!) totaling 44 petabytes of data stored.

Looking forward, they foresee a world where biological storage would allow us to record anything and everything without reservation. Today, we wouldn’t dream of blanketing every square meter of Earth with cameras, and recording every moment for all eternity/human posterity — we simply don’t have the storage capacity. There is a reason that backed up data is usually only kept for a few weeks or months — it just isn’t feasible to have warehouses full of hard drives, which could fail at any time. If the entirety of human knowledge — every book, uttered word, and funny cat video — can be stored in a few hundred kilos of DNA, though… well, it might just be possible to record everything (hello, police state!)

It’s also worth noting that it’s possible to store data in the DNA of living cells — though only for a short time. Storing data in your skin would be a fantastic way of transferring data securely…

1) Mutation. From the paper, a 2x10^-6 error rate. "ll data blocks were recovered with a total of 10 bit errors out of 5.27 million"http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf

2) That little cytosine deamination problem."Abstract: Early in the history of DNA, thymine replaced uracil, thus solving a short-term problem for storing genetic information--mutation of cytosine to uracil through deamination. Any engineer would have replaced cytosine, but evolution is a tinkerer not an engineer. By keeping cytosine and replacing uracil the problem was never eliminated, returning once again with the advent of DNA methylation."http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11252956

C can spontaniously deaminate to become U, which is read as T. "The reversion frequencies for 5-mC and C at 37°C for 150 days are 7.5x10-6 and 3.3 x 10-6,respectively"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC307917/?page=1

3) DNA has a 521-year half-lifehttp://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555

The only reason the DNA works for life IS the whole evolution part.

p.s. I'm not even going to comment on the $12,400 per megabyte price tag, and the reliance on evolved enzymes to do the dirty work.

how does a evolutionist trust anything he believes, Doesn't worldview only support Natural unguided process's ?

Nagel ultimately offered a simple but profound objection to Darwinism: "Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself." In other words, if our mind and morals are simply the accidental products of a blind material process like natural selection acting on random genetic mistakes, what confidence can we have in them as routes to truth?

You're right, to a point. We cannot scientifically demonstrate that the data and perceptions thru which we interpret and understand the universe surrounding us is "true" in any metaphysically absolute sense. We could, for example, be living in a very convincing virtual reality simulaton of a world that is entirely unlike the world that "actually exists."

The problem is that no other worldview is able to resolve this conundrum. For instance, if God exists and created all of reality, we still cannot rule out the possibility that he created us with faulty sensory apparatus, perhaps because if the true nature of reality was revealed to us our minds could not handle it. In fact, theism DEMANDS that this be the case, since every theistic world view invariably posits the existence of "supernatural" entities like angels, demons, jinns, souls, etc that cannot usualy be perceived thru our physical senses. Whereas a naturalistic worldview at least admits to the possibility that the universe exists as we perceive it, supernaturalism rules out this possibility a priori.

In the end the whole question of what is "really real" is just some obscure academic question about which metaphysically inclined philosophers can argue among themselves. Even if you can't prove that the brick wall standing in front of you really exists, I challenge you run head first into it a top speed. Would you do that? If not, why not?

You're right, to a point. We cannot scientifically demonstrate that the data and perceptions thru which we interpret and understand the universe surrounding us is "true" in any metaphysically absolute sense ---we meaning your worldview correct? not the Creation worldview. "We could, for example, be living in a very convincing virtual reality simulaton of a world that is entirely unlike the world that "actually exists.""----how did you come to this conclusion? or could i assert we could all be living in the anus of a unicorn ? " if God exists and created all of reality, we still cannot rule out the possibility that he created us with faulty sensory apparatus, perhaps because if the true nature of reality was revealed to us our minds could not handle it."---based on what ? This is just an assertion(a side step really) based on avoiding what we use everyday (our senses with reason and logic) for survival. again, I bring up the unicorn example. This is the same mentality as the "multiverse" to avoid following evidence that might reveal a truth you wont want. "hereas a naturalistic worldview at least admits to the possibility that the universe exists as we perceive "--and so does theism, this is a statement of ignorance."supernaturalism rules out this possibility a priori."-absolutely not, this is a "God of the gaps" (or at least a cousin of the thought process)"n the end the whole question of what is "really real" is just some obscure academic question about which metaphysically inclined philosophers can argue among themselves."-silliness, again,you dont live your life and make decision in everyday with this mentality."en if you can't prove that the brick wall standing in front of you really exists, I challenge you run head first into it a top speed. Would you do that? If not, why not?"-- because you can prove there is a brickwall using your senses . this is silly. since you are the one that can not believe "whats really real", maybe its because you have ran into a couple of brick walls yourself ?

"en if you can't prove that the brick wall standing in front of you really exists, I challenge you run head first into it a top speed. Would you do that? If not, why not?"-- because you can prove there is a brickwall using your senses.

mmm, well that would be silly on my part, so lets unpack this. Maybe i had assumed some simple basic logic "knowns" , Or i misunderstood the example. so lets slow it down.1) Are you claiming that because religion "DEMANDS" elements that are beyond our 5 senses we cant truly know whats real ? 2) question: What God are you referring to in "God exists and created all of reality, we still cannot rule out the possibility that he created us with faulty sensory apparatus, perhaps because if the true nature of reality was revealed to us our minds could not handle it. " , im not familiar with a theism that holds this God in their faith. What religion are you referring to with this God? Or is this a "straw-god" like Dawkins "flying spaghetti monster"?

Mike, I must congratulate you for having independently discovered the metaphysical problem of hard solipsism, which no philosopher or theologian has managed so solve in, basically all of history.

Simply declaring brainlessly that an omnibenevolent god exists does not solve it either.

"Nagel ultimately offered a simple but profound objection to Darwinism: "Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself." In other words, if our mind and morals are simply the accidental products of a blind material process like natural selection acting on random genetic mistakes, what confidence can we have in them as routes to truth?"

Because the natural selection acting on them is a filter that tunes your capacities so they are in line with the actual world you live in. The very fact of natural selection is what makes your senses accurate enough to be useful. In order to be useful they have to inform you about the actual world you inhabit, since that is the very world that can kill you if you don't percieve it correctly or don't understand it. That's why your senses and your critical faculties are basically guaranteed by natural selection to be somewhat accurate.

They're not perfect, but they don't need to be perfect to be good enough to tell green from orange, left from right and big from small. Those are the things that matter in the real world where a Tiger could be hiding around the next corner. If there's a Tiger there and your senses fail to tell you about it, or your mind fails to comprehend the threat of it, you get eaten and don't pass on your faulty senses and mind to any offspring.

The "profoundness" of Nagel's objection is in it's absolute failure to actually comprehend what he's objecting to. What a DUMB person he is, and you too.

1) Are you claiming that because religion "DEMANDS" elements that are beyond our 5 senses we cant truly know whats real ?

No.

2) question: What God are you referring to in "God exists and created all of reality, we still cannot rule out the possibility that he created us with faulty sensory apparatus, perhaps because if the true nature of reality was revealed to us our minds could not handle it. " , im not familiar with a theism that holds this God in their faith. What religion are you referring to with this God? Or is this a "straw-god" like Dawkins "flying spaghetti monster"?

Who cares whether any religion actually believes this now? You pretend that theologians possess perfect knowledge about all gods that do or could exist. For the vast majority of human history, no one ever heard of Christianity, for the simple reason that it did not exist. Does that mean it cannot be true?

But to address your question more directly, I can think of one very common example just off the top of my head. Islam holds that beings named "Jinn" exist. However, we cannot perceive them. Their existence is something that Muslims are required to accept on faith. Now, the all powerful Allah could easily have created us with senses that were capable of perceiving the Jinn, but for whatever reason deliberately chose not to do so. So a Muslim must believe that his senses are incapable of perceiving reality as it actually exists, and that Allah is responsible for this state of affairs. Like I said, just one example. It wouldn't be hard to think of others.

Simply declaring brainlessly that an omnibenevolent god exists does not solve it either.

Exactly. That's the major point. Debating whether we can know that external reality actually exists is, I suppose, an interesting metaphysical parlour game to play, for those who like that sort of stuff. But if someone is going to say that naturalism is not able to answer the question and use this as an argument for the existence of God, then they need to demonstrate how the question is solved by assuming God exists. They always seem to skip that 2nd part. (And even if they didn't skip it, it still doesn't prove that God exists. The true state of affairs cold still be that hard solipsism is unanswerable, because the things that could theoretically answer it don't exist.)

", which no philosopher or theologian has managed so solve in, basically all of history. '--thats an opinion only , I could just as well say the opposite..neither statement is evidence.

Denialism is a "dodge" and self refuting anyway http://ayinsrazor.blogspot.com/2009/04/better-explanation-of-fallacy-of.html

"Because the natural selection acting on them is a filter that tunes your capacities so they are in line with the actual world you live in"--this a all based on the preassumption the natural selection is true, your not supporting, just asserting.

"The very fact of natural selection is what makes your senses accurate enough to be useful. In order to be useful they have to inform you about the actual world you inhabit, "---sense dont inform, your mind does by logically interpreting your senses (in which senses can be wrong only by understanding them with the mind) , sense are just that a sense, not complete understanding.

" What a DUMB person he is, and you too"--and of course the ad-hominem fallacy....attack the person and not the topic..red flag of lack of understanding and supported claims based on weak claims.

", which no philosopher or theologian has managed so solve in, basically all of history. '--thats an opinion only , I could just as well say the opposite..neither statement is evidence.

So why don't you post the solution, the one which has been accepted by consensus by all theologians and philosophers? Don't be shy.

"Because the natural selection acting on them is a filter that tunes your capacities so they are in line with the actual world you live in"--this a all based on the preassumption the natural selection is true, your not supporting, just asserting.

No, it is based on the indisputable fact that natural selection occurs. Nearly all creationists even admit this (calling it "change within kinds").

Whereas your position depends on the assumption that God exists, and that if he exists human senses are reliable. So there are two begged questions in your argument.

"The very fact of natural selection is what makes your senses accurate enough to be useful. In order to be useful they have to inform you about the actual world you inhabit, "---sense dont inform, your mind does by logically interpreting your senses (in which senses can be wrong only by understanding them with the mind) , sense are just that a sense, not complete understanding.

Do you remember when you wrote this:

"(I)f you can't prove that the brick wall standing in front of you really exists, I challenge you run head first into it a top speed. Would you do that? If not, why not?"-- because you can prove there is a brickwall using your senses.

if our mind and morals are simply the accidental products of a blind material process like natural selection acting on random genetic mistakes, what confidence can we have in them as routes to truth

I am completely uninterested in any discussion of natural selection as a supposed route to moral truth. So let's discuss it and the rest of the evolutionary process (which comprises by far the majority of the process, natural selection being only a piece, albeit quite a famous one) from the standpoint of scientific truth.

Perhaps the primary example of a statement that is obviously and evidently true is "2+2=4." That is as materialistic as it can be, no deity or designer required or invoked. Despite that, it doesn't require any particular "worldview" to assess its truth. Any priest, rabbi, imam, or Wiccan will be as happy to confirm its correctness as your friendly neighborhood atheist.

It is in a very similar sense that we know the evolutionary process and the theory of evolution in general are true (though of course all sorts of interesting questions and issues remain, the same as they do about other great, true scientific theories like quantum mechanics or general relativity). Hundreds of thousands of experiments and observations have been done by tens of thousands of good careful scientists over more than a hundred years that confirm the truth of evolution beyond any reasonable objection. These confirmations come from multiple independent fields of research, everything from particle physics to geology to paleontology to genetics.

So all that's left are unreasonable objections. Since you referred to morals and blind material processes, I am fairly confident I can guess the source of your unreasonableness.

"So why don't you post the solution, the one which has been accepted by consensus by all theologians and philosophers? Don't be shy. '--why were you so shy as not to support your claim ? So you called me out on it, thats was the point..you called me out, but did not hold yourself to the sdame "call out"--thanks for making my point.

"I am completely uninterested in any discussion of natural selection as a supposed route to moral truth. So let's discuss it "---UH ? why discuss something your not interested in? how objective would that be?

"Perhaps the primary example of a statement that is obviously and evidently true is "2+2=4." That is as materialistic as it can be, no deity or designer required or invoked. Despite that, it doesn't require any particular "worldview" to assess its truth. Any priest, rabbi, imam, or Wiccan will be as happy to confirm its correctness as your friendly neighborhood atheist." -- ? How is mathematics materialistic ? its a tool of the mind , not something that can be proven in a laboratory. No ones arguing 2+2=4, the the point is, laws of mathematical are outside of materialism , and cannot create anything material, it just explains what is already created.

"It is in a very similar sense that we know the evolutionary process and the theory of evolution in general are true '--define evolution that is generally true here , micro-yes,change over time-sure, Macro-give me one case of "kind changing kind" one species into completely other species. Is this why Royal Society’s fall evolution rethink meet is being called this year ? http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/royal-societys-fall-evolution-rethink-meet-is-progress-in-science/

Hundreds of thousands of experiments and observations have been done by tens of thousands of good careful scientists over more than a hundred years that confirm the truth of evolution beyond any reasonable objection. These confirmations come from multiple independent fields of research, everything from particle physics to geology to paleontology to genetics.---such as? can you give me one that shows one kind becoming a completely different kind?

"So all that's left are unreasonable objections"-i believe this could be applied to your objections. besides, how does a evolutionist fit "reason" into its argument ? reason is not derived from material and his not bound by natural laws. according to evolution, your just reacting to chemical processes in your physical brain."dancing to your DNA" , why trust anything you have to say?

"So why don't you post the solution, the one which has been accepted by consensus by all theologians and philosophers? Don't be shy. '--why were you so shy as not to support your claim ? So you called me out on it, thats was the point..you called me out, but did not hold yourself to the sdame "call out"--thanks for making my point.

So you got nothing. Just bluster and name-calling. Colour me unsurprised.

Exactly which claim are you saying I did not support? Please be specific.

define evolution that is generally true here , micro-yes,change over time-sure, Macro-give me one case of "kind changing kind" one species into completely other species.

LOL! It seems you are confusing evolution with Pokémon. That's where you'll find one "kind" changing into another "kind". Otherwise, perhaps you can provide us with the long-elusive definition of the creationist "kind". Only, it seems you creationists are having a hard time coming up with one:

"--thats an opinion only , I could just as well say the opposite..neither statement is evidence."

Yes, of course it's an opinion, It's also one that happens to be a fact. An opinion I hold because the facts convinced me. I have read many attempts by philosophers and theologians to try to solve the problem of solipsism, none succeed. If you can find one who solves it, let me know. I'm not a solipsist myself because the lack of a solution to a logical conondrum does not mean it's true, it just means either we haven't yet figured out how to solve it, or it's perhaps unsolvable. Neither option entials we should believe solipsism is true.

"this a all based on the preassumption the natural selection is true, your not supporting, just asserting."

You're confused about what has happened here. You bring an argument that's supposed to show a contradiction between evolutionary theory and the functioning of our senses critical faculties, I then rebut that argument by showing it does not consider how natural selection works.

The theory of evolution might be false, but if it is false it is NOT because natural selection fails to select for correctly functioning brains and senses.

Our senses and critical faculties might be inherently flawed and completely inaccurate, but it is NOT because the evolutionary process has failed to produce correctly functioning senses and faculties. Why? Because of the argument I made.

"--sense dont inform, your mind does by logically interpreting your senses (in which senses can be wrong only by understanding them with the mind) , sense are just that a sense, not complete understanding."

Your senses inform your mind. Yes they do, that's their function. They are entities for gathering information and sending it to your brain. Sensory-information. Visible light, temperature, sound, smell, taste and touch are all types of information that your sense can pick up. That information is then interpreted by your mind.

Both the mind and your senses have to work property and somewhat accurately for you to not run around and kill yourself in the real world. If your eyes fail to pick up the color orange, then it will not inform your brain that orange is in your field of view. If your brain does not recieve orange, it might not infer "orange tiger", and you end up eaten.

If your brain DOES recieve orange, but fails to correctly infer "orange tiger", you also get eaten.

If your eyes correctly pick up orange, AND your brain correctly infers "orange tiger", you might just be able to get away in time. So your genes survive.

That's how evolution pretty much guarantees that your senses and critical faculties are reliable. If they weren't, you'd probably be dead.

"and of course the ad-hominem fallacy....attack the person and not the topic..red flag of lack of understanding and supported claims based on weak claims."

That's not an ad hominem fallacy, you gimp. (that's not an ad-hominem either, why? Because I don't conclude you're wrong because you're a gimp, it's the other way around, I conclude you're a gimp because you're demonstrably wrong at a level that is trivial to demonstrate.

It's an insult, I'm deliberately insulting you and the crackpot philosopher you got that terrible argument against evolution from. It is only an ad-hominem fallacy if I simply say, for example "you are wrong because you are dumb". That would be an ad-hominem fallacy. Simply calling you "gimp" is not in itself fallacious.

Rather, I explained what is wrong with all your arguments(including your mistaken application of the ad-hominem fallacy), and THEN I insulted you. You see the difference?

Mike Edwards, You misread judmac. Here's the sentence without the parenthetic phrase:

"I am completely uninterested in any discussion of natural selection as a supposed route to moral truth. So let's discuss it and the rest of the evolutionary process from the standpoint of scientific truth."

Mike Edwards, what you write would make more sense if you read judmarc correctly. Here's the sentence you misquoted, with the parenthetic clause removed:

"I am completely uninterested in any discussion of natural selection as a supposed route to moral truth. So let's discuss it and the rest of the evolutionary process from the standpoint of scientific truth."

Mike Edwards, what you write would make more sense if you read judmarc correctly. Here's the sentence you misquoted, with the parenthetic clause removed:

"I am completely uninterested in any discussion of natural selection as a supposed route to moral truth. So let's discuss it and the rest of the evolutionary process from the standpoint of scientific truth."

Mike Edwards: "Macro-give me one case of "kind changing kind" one species into completely other species...can you give me one that shows one kind becoming a completely different kind?

Evolutionary theory does not require a change of "kind." Humans and non-human apes are the same "kind" because they descend from a common ancestor.

To prove this, here is the definition of "kind" as given by Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International, Jonathan Sarfati's outfit:

What then do we say to an evolutionist who understandably presses us for a definition of a created kind or identification of same today? I suggest the following for consideration:

Groups of living organisms belong in the same created kind if they have descended from the same ancestral gene pool. ["Variation, information and the created kind." Carl Wieland. Journal of Creation 5(1):42–47. April 1991.]

Likewise, humans and fish are the same "kind" because they originated from a common ancestor. Evolutionary theory forbids changes of kind. If no kind is observed to change into a different kind, this evidence supports macroevolution by common descent.

Lutesuite is warming my lil heart with his debating skills here, dare I say, he is diogenizing poor Mike. Here Lutesuite turns the EAAN (Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism) on its head and uses it to undermine supernaturalism:

"if God exists and created all of reality, we still cannot rule out the possibility that he created us with faulty sensory apparatus, perhaps because if the true nature of reality was revealed to us our minds could not handle it."

Ooh, snap! But Mike tries pure denial:

Mike: "based on what ? This is just an assertion"

Wait a minute, the EAAN itself is based on a bare assertion, "if our brains evolved, our mental capacities might not be reliable." Certainly this assertion can be made equally about the creation by unknown, supernatural beings with unlimited power and unknown purposes:

"If our brains were created by supernatural beings, our mental capacities might not be reliable."

How could Mike disagree without falling into absurdities? After all

1. Christians believe that the brains of Jews and Muslims were supernaturally created but led them to false conclusions. Jews believe that the brains of Christians and Muslims were supernaturally created but led them to false conclusions. Muslims believe that the brains of Jews and Christians were supernaturally created but led them to false conclusions. Each monotheistic religion asserts that MOST of the human population has unreliable cognitive faculties because each of their religions are rejected by most humans.

2. The Bible explicitly states that God is a deceiver who tricks people. (Bible chapter and verse below.)

But suppose we didn't have positive evidence 1 and 2 above. In this case, it would still be required for the Christian to prove that supernatural creation requires, logically entails the non-existence of unreliable cognitive faculties in order for the Christian to claim the Christian worldview "solves" the problem of unreliable cognitive faculties. Of course, they're not going to argue that because they believe most of mankind is delusional for rejecting Christianity.

Let's be clear who has the burden of proof. If you claim it is a "problem", that one must disprove the claim

A. Mankind's mental faculties are unreliable

Then YOU have the burden of proof to show

B. If our brains are created by magic, there are no unreliable mental faculties

Only then does B "solve" the problem allegedly raised by A. You won't do that because most humans reject Christianity, so you must concede that unreliable mental faculties exist.

Let's present Mike with a dichotomy.

1. Do you agree that most humans on Earth rejecting Christianity, but Christianity being true, leads to the conclusion that unreliable mental faculties exist?

2. If the Christian worldview requires unreliable mental faculties exist, why doesn't this undermine the very faculties you used to arrive at it?

Above I promised you guys some Bible verses where God is described as deceptive. Here are a few.

[1 Kings 22:19-23]: 19 Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. 20 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’“One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’22 “‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’23 “So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”

Ezekiel 14:9-10: And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.10 And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity: the punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that seeketh unto him

[2 Thessalonians 2:9-12]: The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Deuteronomy 13:1 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.

That's some sneaky shit!

If God sends out powerful delusions, how do you know you are not deluded?

If Christianity is true, and your brain was supernaturally created by the deceptive god of the Bible, this should undermine your confidence in the mental faculties you relied on to arrive at this conclusion.

And now a final dig. If Christianity is true, reason itself is unreliable, so that belief undermines your confidence in any belief you arrive at through reason. As Martin Luther said, "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has", a slogan that appears on countless church marquees.

If "reason is the greatest enemy faith has", as all the church marquees cry out, your faith surely undermines your confidence in reason and in all beliefs arrived at through reason.

Likewise, humans and fish are the same "kind" because they originated from a common ancestor. ok, then all living species are the same kind because they share the basic biologic make up to be able to survive in this biosphere correct ? Couldn't that also open a possibility of a common creator ?

and now a final dig. If Christianity is true, reason itself is unreliable, so that belief undermines your confidence in any belief you arrive at through reason"--Isaiah 1:18King James Version (KJV)

18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. SO because Martin Luther claims Reason is the enemy of truth, it is true?

Mike asks: doesnt your argument only hold if you believe that we cant really understand/know ?

Close. The 'epistemological' argument only undermines a worldview (Christian or naturalistic) if that worldview entails that all conclusions are false. This however, means that the EAAN and other 'epistemological' arguments against naturalism, like presuppositional theology, are invalid.

The problem with 'epistemological' arguments is that they go like this:

1. If brains were created by (evolution/natural selection/supernatural beings, etc.) then our mental faculties can possibly produce false conclusions.

2. Our brains were created by (evolution/natural selection/supernatural beings, etc.)

4. 2 was arrived at via our mental faculties.

5. If 2 is true, 2 must be false, leading to a contradiction.

That would be a non sequitur. To fix the logic, between 2 and 4 there are unspoken assumptions like:

3. If our mental faculties can possibly produce false conclusions, then everything arrived at by our mental faculties is false.

Step 3 is an unspoken presumption of epistemological arguments. The problems are:

A. If 3 is true, it would also undermine *supernatural* theories of the origin of mental faculties.

B. If 3 is not true, 2 allows for the *possibility* of the output of mental faculties being unreliable, but not a proof of falsity of the output of mental faculties. Step 5 requires a contradiction, and a possibility is not enough to make a contradiction. With no contradiction in 5, 2 is not disproven nor problematic. In this case epistemological arguments like the EAAN and presuppositional theology have huge non sequiturs and don't prove anything.

Obviously this is a non sequitur, if it weren't, I could 'prove' that I'm not really drunk even after I've drunk a bottle of vodka. The problem is that step 3 must be presupposed to make a contradiction, but if 3 is true, you wind up undermining all kinds of everyday facts, and supernatural worldviews also.

ok, then all living species are the same kind because they share the basic biologic make up to be able to survive in this biosphere correct ?

No. They are all the same "kind" because they all share a common ancestor. You really have a hard time grasping even the most simple concepts, even the ones that pertain to creationism. Here you are, throwing out that term "kind", and it turns out you don't even understand what it means.

Couldn't that also open a possibility of a common creator ?.

Here's a term for you to research: "Nested hierarchy." Go along and look it up, and then come back and show us if you understand it, and why it rules out a "common creator." There's a good boy.

I will harp on the non-coding DNA issue until creationists admit they're wrong.

I posted this at Shallit's blog, I'll re-post it here.

Doug Axe: "They found out that a very small fraction of the genome actually encodes proteins --- that was the one aspect of genomes that we understood well, is that they encode proteins --- so they assumed all the rest of it is junk."

Lying piece of shit! Molecular biologists have known since the 1950's that non-coding DNA can be functional! The Nobel Committee has handed out a shelf-full of prizes to scientists (none of them creationists) for finding functions in non-coding DNA!

How many times will these pathological liars repeat this lie?

Do we need to remind this lying piece of shit of the WHOLE HISTORY of molecular fucking biology!?

The structure of tRNA was known by 1964, crystal structure solved in 1974. tRNA is made from non-coding RNA.

The ribosome was known to be largely nucleic acid in the 1950's, general molecular structure known since the early 1970s, by the 1980's it was known the ribosome was a ribozyme-- based on functions residing in non-coding DNA.

Explain to me how scientists did not pay enough attention to function in non-coding DNA?

Meanwhile, the budge for Axe's Biologic Institute is about $300,000 a year. In the last four years, that's $1.2 million. For $1.2 million, how many nucleotides of non-coding DNA did the IDiots discover to have a novel function?

Right, but IDiots' don't have preconceptions. They have "worldview training sessions", as Stephen Meyer calls them: that is, apologetics. "Worldview training" is what Meyer and other IDiots do to young people because their "worldview" is "fragile" and vulnerable when they go to college and meet real scientists for the first time.

"A founder of an intelligent design movement [Stephen Meyer] warns parents that as their sons and daughters head off to college, they may be in danger of undergoing a "faith-ectomy" within the first couple of years of alleged "higher learning."

According to the Discovery Institute's Dr. Stephen Meyer, when Christian students enter college, a majority of them are in danger of losing their faith, as their fragile worldview and Christian upbringing are seriously challenged."

By facts and evidence. Which some militant atheists believe should appear at least part of the time in "alleged" higher learning.

"[Meyer] laments that students entering Christian colleges and universities are not necessarily immune...

"It can be very disorienting if you have biologists who are Christians but Darwinists, or psychologists who are Christians but behaviorists who think that all human behavior is determined by genes and environment," Dr. Meyer notes.

Dr. Meyer has helped develop the TrueU series -- worldview training sessions that can help prepare those students who will soon be entering college, as well as those who have already enrolled." [Cited Here]

Meyer is more than right. Young students should learn and be educated why naturalism fails. Its a bankrupt world view based on incapable and impotent mechanisms ( chance ), which are not a acting force, but nothing. And this is hidden to most, by neglecting that fact, but substitute it with evolution, which is sold as a undeniable fact.

A wealth of information is feeded as if this information would make evolution undeniable, forgetting that the core claim , namely common ancestry, has been proven false even by mainstream science, and biodiversity only through mutations and natural selection has never been proven to be enough.

took not long to someone raising the red flag. How predictable...kkkk.

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005912A universal Tree of Life (TOL) has long been a goal of molecular phylogeneticists, but reticulation at the level of genes and possibly at the levels of cells and species renders any simple interpretation of such a TOL, especially as applied to prokaryotes, problematic. 12 One of the several ways in which microbiology puts the neo-Darwinian synthesis in jeopardy is by the threatening to “uproot the Tree of Life (TOL)” [1]. Lateral gene transfer (LGT) is much more frequent than most biologists would have imagined up until about 20 years ago, so phylogenetic trees based on sequences of different prokaryotic genes are often different. How to tease out from such conflicting data something that might correspond to a single, universal Tree of Life becomes problematic. Moreover, since many important evolutionary transitions involve lineage fusions at one level or another, the aptness of a tree (a pattern of successive bifurcations) as a summary of life’s history is uncertain [2–4].

LOL! It seems you are confusing evolution with Pokémon. That's where you'll find one "kind" changing into another "kind". ----This article only shows differences of opinion on where to place fragments of skulls in a category . Lining up skulls on a time table doesnt support maco evoltion. It doesnt explain or demonstrate the information needed to produce new body plans.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

Sandwalk

The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

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Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.